Re: port-i386/57662: StarTech ICUSB23208FD 8-Port USB-to-Serial Adapter Hub fails on Alix with NetBSD/i386 9.3

[Alexander Schreiber <als%thangorodrim.ch@localhost>]

On Mon, Oct 23, 2023 at 04:05:01AM +0000, David H. Gutteridge wrote:
> The following reply was made to PR port-i386/57662; it has been noted by GNATS.
> 
> From: "David H. Gutteridge" <david%gutteridge.ca@localhost>
> To: gnats-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost
> Cc: 
> Subject: Re: port-i386/57662: StarTech ICUSB23208FD 8-Port USB-to-Serial
>  Adapter Hub fails on Alix with NetBSD/i386 9.3
> Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:02:02 -0400
> 
>  On Mon, 16 Oct 2023 at 09:14:45 +0200, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
>  [...]
>  >Invalid PR number, I assume you meant 54977? And while I can see memory
>  >fragmentation being an issue with block devices, I wouldn't expect a
>  >serial device to need that much memory to run into it, especially on
>  >a freshly booted machine that runs little else (sshd, ntpd). Although
>  >yes, this machine only does have 256M of RAM, so .. maybe?
>  
>  Yes, that's Gnats not handling escaped/encoded content correctly,
>  should indeed be 54977.
>  
>  There's perhaps more than one issue occurring here. While the final
>  "autoconfiguration" error you mentioned is quite generic, part of why I
>  mentioned the potential overlap is because that's the same symptom I
>  see when I'm able to initially mount a umass device successfully upon
>  initial boot, but some time later, the same device will be rejected
>  with that error. Could be completely different causes, of course.
>  
>  I'd suggest testing with a -current kernel. (Sorry, I don't have any
>  particularly useful insights here; I do use USB-serial adapters, but
>  nothing quite like that.)

And I just did, I grabbed NetBSD 10.0_BETA i386 boot iso from:

http://nycdn.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/netbsd-10/202310212330Z/i386/installation/cdrom/boot.iso

and installed it on another one of those Alix machines I've got kicking
around. Somewhat similar behaviour. I can do a few sessions with cu
(3-5 seems to be typical) and then, with the next session, cu just hangs
(sitting in status D, no output and so far I've been willing to wait a few
min but to no avail).

top says:

CPU states:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.0% system,  0.0% interrupt,  100% idle

Memory: 57M Act, 11M Wired, 13M Exec, 31M File, 138M Free
Swap: 512M Total, 512M Free / Pools: 22M Used

and again, nothing in dmesg. 

uname -a says:
NetBSD machine-name 10.0_BETA NetBSD 10.0_BETA (GENERIC) #0: Sat Oct 21 13:01:00 UTC 2023  mkrepro%mkrepro.NetBSD.org@localhost:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC i386

Kind regards,
            Alex.
-- 
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison